Your favorite fall drink takes on a new food form in this pumpkin chocolate swirl bread. Spiced pumpkin bread batter is marbled with chocolate espresso cake batter for the most festive dessert, both in looks and flavor. This easy bread (it’s really more of a cake!) has the best of chocolate chip pumpkin bread and a pumpkin spice latte, two of fall’s most popular treats. The softest, lightest cake is coated in turbinado sugar to give it a crunchy crust that takes this from basic homemade pumpkin bread to bakery-level pastry.
What Makes This Pumpkin Bread the Best?
This is my favorite pumpkin bread recipe because of this combination of flavors and its texture. Coffee is the secret to the most rich and decadent chocolate cake batter; adding hot coffee “blooms” the cocoa powder, allowing it to release its full flavor. In this recipe, you get that mixed with the perfect spiced pumpkin bread. Cake flour and buttermilk ensure this cake is light, soft, and moist. And as mentioned earlier, coating the loaf pan with turbinado sugar before adding the batter makes for the most satisfying sweet and crunchy crust around the whole loaf.
Is This Chocolate Pumpkin Swirl Bread Hard to Make?
Don’t be fooled by its appearance; this marble bread is super easy. You only have to make one main batter, then split it in half and add a few other ingredients to each. The recipe has the right amount of liquid to dry ingredients, ensuring your pumpkin bread will be fluffy and soft, not dense! It’s basically foolproof, and it’ll be your new favorite fall snack or breakfast (tough competition for my pumpkin croissants!).
Bake Notes
- The “hardest” step of this bread is probably browning the butter, although it’s not hard if you learn it correctly. My olive oil cake with brown butter cream cheese frosting explains the process in-depth! If you want this to be a more hands-off recipe, you can skip this step and use regular softened butter.
- If you don’t have cake flour, you can use all-purpose flour. If you’re using only all-purpose flour, you’ll need two cups total (no need for the extra two tablespoons the recipe calls for with cake flour).
- Any coarse sugar will do—demerara, turbinado, or sugar in the raw.
- If you don’t have pumpkin pie spice, you can easily make your own using 1 teaspoon of cinnamon, ½ teaspoon of ginger, and a little less than a ¼ teaspoon each of nutmeg cloves. It’ll be a bit more than the 1.5 teaspoons the recipe calls for, but that’s totally fine!
Chocolate Pumpkin Spice Latte Bread
Description
Your favorite pumpkin dessert meets your favorite fall drink with this chocolate pumpkin spice latte pumpkin bread.
Ingredients
- 5 tbsp brown butter, softened (see Bake Notes)
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 2 eggs, room temperature
- 1 cup buttermilk, room temperature
- 1 cup all-purpose flour
- 1 cup + 2 tbsp cake flour
- 1.5 tsp baking powder
- 3/4 tsp baking soda
- 1 tsp salt
- 1.5–2 tsp pumpkin pie spice
- 1/2 tsp vanilla extract
- 3/4 cup pumpkin puree
- 1.5 tbsp instant coffee granules
- 4 tbsp hot water
- 1/3 cup cocoa powder
- Butter, for greasing the loaf pan
- 1/3 cup turbinado sugar
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350 F.
- In a large bowl or the bowl of a stand mixer, add the brown butter and sugar. Use a whisk, a hand-mixer, or the whisk attachment of a stand mixer to cream the butter and sugar together until it’s lighter in color, about 2 minutes (it probably won’t be as “fluffy” as when done with regular butter).
- Add the eggs one at a time, and beat together after each addition.
- Add the buttermilk and whisk gently or mix on low speed until it’s incorporated.
- In another large bowl, sift together the all-purpose flour, cake flour, baking powder, baking soda, and salt. Whisk to combine.
- Pour 1/3 of the wet ingredient mixture into the dry ingredient mixture. Use a spatula to gently fold the two together just until only a few lumps of flour remain. Add half of the remaining wet ingredients and fold together again gently. Repeat with the remaining wet ingredient mixture.
- Pour 1/2 of the batter into a medium-sized bowl. Set both bowls aside for a moment.
- Add the instant coffee granules to a small cup or bowl and pour the hot water over them. Use a fork to mix it together until all of the granules are dissolved.
- To one half of the batter, add the hot instant coffee mixture and cocoa powder. Use a small spoon or spatula to gently fold the ingredients together until everything is combined.
- To the other half of the batter, add the pumpkin pie spice, vanilla extract, and pumpkin puree. Fold them in.
- Coat the loaf pan with butter, covering the entire interior surface area. Pour the turbinado sugar into the loaf pan and tilt the loaf pan from side to side, tapping the sides to coax the turbinado sugar to the edges of the pan without spilling (too much, at least). The sugar should stick to the buttered sides. You’re aiming to coat the whole inside of the loaf pan with sugar.
- Dump any remaining sugar into a small bowl and set it aside.
- Using a spoon or a cookie scoop, drop one scoop of the pumpkin batter into the corner of the loaf pan. Next to it, drop one scoop of the chocolate batter. Continue until the bottom of the loaf pan is covered with alternating scoops of batter.
- Using a knife, draw an S into the batter, starting in one corner and ending in the corner diagonal from it. This is how you get the marbled look!
- Repeat the alternating scoop-dropping process for the second layer of batter.
- Repeat the “S” drawing with the knife.
- Repeat both the scooping and and marbling until all the batter is used up.
- Coat the top of the batter with the remaining turbinado sugar.
- Bake the loaf for 55-65 minutes, until a knife inserted into the center comes out clean.
- Let it cool for 10 minutes in the pan, then finish cooling the loaf on a wire rack.
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Gorgeous loaf!